Cold Comfort

November 14, 2011
In British author Bates’s solid follow-up to 2010’s Frozen Assets, Gunnhildur “Gunna” Gísladóttir, now a sergeant with the Serious Crime Unit in Reykjavík, Iceland, looks into the murder of minor celebrity Svana Geirs, who hosted a TV fitness show and was intimately involved with various athletes and business figures. Meanwhile, Ómar Magnússon, a nasty piece of work doing a stretch in prison for murder, escapes and begins causing mayhem. A rare glimpse of modern-day Iceland with its small population, troubled economy, and global ties provides the backdrop for a tricky plot involving a strong cast of police characters led by the prickly Gunna. Bates, who lived 10 years in Iceland, has an unfortunate and distracting habit of abruptly changing scene, but he still manages to engage the reader as Gunna explores the prominent men who knew Svana and deals with Magnùsson’s carnage.

January 1, 2012

Svana Geirs, a TV fitness show host, is slain in her apartment. Her side profession as a well-paid call girl for a gentlemen's sex club suggests a possible motive. At about the same time, Ommi Magnusson, a local bruiser, escapes prison. At first glance, Reykjavik's Serious Crimes Unit, led by recently promoted Sergeant Gunnhildur ("Gunna"), doesn't think the two crimes are linked. But then Ommi's fresh handprints are found in Svana's apartment. Gunna learns that Ommi escaped prison to even the score for a crime he didn't commit a decade earlier, but he's not going to take the fall twice. If she can figure out Svana's client list, Gunna knows she will find the killer in both cases. VERDICT More so than the location, the strengths of this second series entry (after Frozen Assets) by a British author who lived in Iceland for ten years are Gunna's character and the methodically paced procedural. For fans of Nordic crime fiction.

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